


casualty of chance

by imightjustvomit



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, a 'what was ardyn going to do if he killed noct in that final battle anyway' thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 04:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20860556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imightjustvomit/pseuds/imightjustvomit
Summary: A test failed reflects unmercifully upon the tutor.





	casualty of chance

Noctis Lucis Caelum is the Chosen King. A Holy being, blessed by the Astrals and a power his own. The one to Bring the Light. The one to bring about his final end. An unstoppable force - an inescapable fate. For them both. Inevitable. 

The boy lies limp in his arms.

He’d suffered. Alone and in the dark, alone and in pain and the dark and the silence. For millennia, he’d had nothing but the ever cruel delusions of his own growing insanity to bear company. Nothing but the twisted, twisting, corrupted visions of a man once his kin mocking him with a woman once his love by his side. 

Imprisoned in body. Imprison in soul. Trapped in a fate that kept his flesh from allowing him respite and his soul from finding peace. Trapped still without the chains and cell. Trapped still without a name or place in the world he wandered. But there was an end. An end to the disgusting, thorn paved trail of his life. 

A Blessed one with the key to his immortal prison. 

The boy lies limp in his arms and he is cold. He is still.

Ardyn’s knees don’t feel the stone beneath them. Nor the cold. Nor the thick, cloying damp of drying blood. He doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t smell the iron thickening the air. He won’t. He won’t allow a single sensation to access his attentions. Won’t permit any signal of a future that can’t be. It cannot be. His salvation is nigh, and no future concerns him. 

The body of a tired man lies still. His arms cradle him. He cradles him and draws him close. The chill creeps through him. 

Grief dampens his face, burning through heat or the means. Miasma or tears. Either way it’s a foul sensation. A vile feeling that attempts to lend credit to the truth he will not face, will not ever face, will not ever look in the eye because his eyes are closed, as they will stay. 

Where are this man’s friends? His loyal companions, his followers, his brothers? The men who walked beside this boy into this accursed place. This castle built upon deceit and betrayal, a bed of made but unlaid in by the one who had attempted to bury him beneath it. By his own brother, a brother by blood as thin as water, a brother who was nothing in the shadows of the men who had to chosen their place in this boy’s life. Who had chosen to walk beside him. 

Why weren’t they here, saving him now? This useless boy. This still, motionless man. Noctis Lucis Caelum, a Prince like no other, a brother, a boy beloved, a son adored. So still in his arm, so cold where he lies. 

Ardyn tipped his cheek to press against the forehead of the man who was truly destined to be a salvation for all, the final rescue for a world plunged into darkness by the never ending plague and a man abandoned through the God’s indifference. 

He rocks back and forth as though holding a child, and the shattered glass of potions and aethers crushes beneath him though he feels no pain. The fiery red phoenix feathers lie useless upon the ground surrounding the draping fabric of his coat, soaked in healing liquids that had been as helpful as water or nothing at all. The hole in the man's abdomen bleeds sluggish and slow, only halfway closed, with the gore of half healed injury rimming the edges of the mortal wound. Attempted clots and oozing plasma. An abandoned effort by a body that does know how to give up. 

Noctis can't be dead. He can not die before Ardyn, because Ardyn can not fell the plague, and can not follow. 

But the man in his arms lies cold and motionless still, dead to this world, numb to their fate. His face at painful rest. His sleep eternal. Regret, remorse and denial run thick in Ardyn’s veins. Refusal to believe overpowers them all, and he’s left blank and pale. 

He folds, slow and serene. He too will sleep. He too will rest, for now. He will follow. 

Upon the stone before the steps of the Citadel where dead Kings once stood, the two uncrowned Princes lie still. They are motionless. Cold. 

Above them, a black sky writhes.

**Author's Note:**

> ardyn man plays too much just politely ask to have die


End file.
